Matthew Vaughn Explains Why Die-Hard Geeks Should Shut Up And Enjoy X-Men: First Class

Do you remember that great Simpsons' Halloween episode where Lucy Lawless is besieged by a bunch of nit-picking nerds who are bitching about picayune mistakes in her show? Lucy (dressed as Xena, of course), gets so fed up that she just starts answering "A wizard did it." Well, I think director Matthew Vaughn just delivered the comic book equivalent of "a wizard did it" to any carping comic book dork with his pants in twist about X-Men: First Class.

Speaking to Entertainment Weekly, Vaughn is asked if he's concerned by the fact that, no matter what he might do, he'll anger at least some of the X-Men's die hard fans. And Vaughn beautifully explains that

Yeah, but I could tell those fans that they're wrong. One thing about the X-Men world is that, if you know your X-Men universe, every writer reinvented the storyline. I did my research, and none of the histories of the characters make any sense. Each writer just totally changed the history to make their plot work. So I can quite safely say that X-Men has a history of reinventing its history for the sake of the plot.

The best part is that Vaughn really has been doing his homework because he's absolutely right. There's a whole raft of X-Men stories that rejigger, remodel or just outright invalidate previous stories. Jean Grey was dead until she wasn't! There was a secret team of other X-Men that died at Krakoa! Xorn is Magneto but not really but Xorn is real but he has a brother! I'm staring at a shelf of my X-Men trade paperbacks and half of them contradict the other half.

And that's fine! A good story is a good story and an X-Men writer, either in the comic books or the movie, shouldn't feel straightjacketed by some flight of fancy a different writer took 30-odd years ago. Whether or not X-Men: First Class is enjoyable will depend on the actions of the director, the screenwriters and the actors, not on whether the guy who plays Havok should be a different age or any other bits of unimportant minutiae.

Besides, if fans really want to work themselves into a lather, they should concentrate on the fact that Vaughn said that the Twilight fangirls will love it. That, there's no defense for.

· X-Men:First Class Scoop: Director Matthew Vaughn says imagine Bond...and Twilight [EW]